Chapter 85 – The Black Covenant

The forest swallowed them whole.

Moonlight pierced through broken branches as Kael and Aria stumbled deeper into the wilderness. Their breaths came ragged, boots caked with mud and ash. Behind them, the city’s bells still echoed, carried on the wind like a curse.

But silence did not mean safety.

Shadows slithered unnaturally across the treeline. Kael stiffened. These were not his.

From the canopy above, arrows tipped with shimmering glyphs rained down. Kael raised a shield of darkness, but the runes burned through, hissing like acid.

“Not Inquisitors…” Aria whispered, her blade trembling. “Something else.”

Figures emerged from the trees—hooded, masked, moving with a grace that screamed of precision. Unlike the holy army, their armor was blackened steel engraved with spirals of crimson. Their insignia: a circle broken by a jagged line, painted across their cloaks.

The leader stepped forward, lowering his hood. His face was pale, lips marked with inked runes that pulsed faintly.

“The Condemned lives,” he said, his voice cold as iron. “Good. We have been waiting.”

Kael narrowed his eyes, shadows swirling protectively. “Who are you?”

The man smiled faintly. “The world calls us traitors, heretics, demons. But we are truth given form. We are the Black Covenant—and you, Kael, are the key we bled centuries to find.”

Aria moved in front of Kael. “If you wanted him dead, you had your chance. What do you want?”

The leader tilted his head, almost amused. “We want survival. And survival demands we break this world’s false gods… just as you already have.”

At his gesture, the assassins lowered their weapons. The Covenant members knelt, one by one, their masked faces bowing toward Kael as if before a king.

The leader’s voice lowered, reverent yet sharp:

“Your shadows do not belong to you alone. They are ours. Ancient, forgotten. You are the vessel. The curse. The hope.”

Kael’s blood chilled. Something deep inside him stirred, as if recognizing their words. The shadows writhed at his feet, not in defiance—but in agreement.

For the first time, Kael wondered if he was not merely using the darkness—
But if it had chosen him long before he could resist.